


an endless cycle

by dontknowjack



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: (betas arent allowed here anyways), Angst, Canon Compliant, Child Soldier Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream Angst (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Emotional Hurt, Flashbacks, Heavy Angst, Hurt, Hurt Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt No Comfort, I Don't Even Know, I am so sorry, Pandora's Vault, Prisoner Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Sad Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Sad Ending, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Villain Wilbur Soot, he was at any rate, i listened to the coconut song while making this oh god, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:56:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28917216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontknowjack/pseuds/dontknowjack
Summary: He is a puppeteer.He is a villain.He is a monster.Or; Wilbur's manipulation makes its mark on Dream as he contemplates in Pandora's Vault.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & Wilbur Soot, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 340
Collections: dream-centric discord comp.





	an endless cycle

**Author's Note:**

> @the judges im so sorry lmao i wrote most of this in a sleep-deprived haze
> 
> also this parts of this was inspired by [this tumblr post !!](https://sootstuff.tumblr.com/post/633867123873234944/dreamteamfanblog-halcyons-tea-window)

It's dark.

It's quiet.

He lets out a sigh.

Slowly, groggily, his hand traces slow aimless circles on the bare floor, the cold unforgiving obsidian saps away all his warmth.

He doesn't care.

The prison itself is taking so much more than simply his warmth, anyways. Even now, he can feel himself slowly slipping away ~~he already has~~ , along with his will. His will to do anything had been fading away for weeks, if not months by now, but he had still been trying.

Trying to hold on.

~~_For them._ ~~

He sighs; he could barely muster up the strength to move, now, a stark contrast to the person he used to be. He used to be bright smiles and an endless fountain of energy, so different compared to the tired worn body slumped in a corner of the cell.

It was all meaningless, now, sitting here all alone in a prison he and Sam had built to be inescapable. A fortress, a _true_ one, fortified to the max and chaining the villain inside who lingers on broken strings, limp body strung up and weakly struggling.

He would never be free again, this was ensured. He had written out his own fate with sure words and confident gestures, only to be shoved in here himself.

He blinks slowly, clenches a hand. Sighs and tries to breathe.

Breathe in, breathe out.

You are okay.

_You are a puppeteer._

He draws his knees closer to his chest, clenching his eyes shut and body numb. Raises a hand to rub at his eyes, tugging at his hair, digging his nails into his skin.

He's heard them again and again, again and again. A game, running in circles in his brain. Echoes of words spat at him from the others, burrowing into his where they remained, cemented there.

Whispers and screams of lies and truth and half-muddled statements play on a sickening repeat in his mind, as he tries to reach through the fog and blurring reality around him.

_You are a villain._

He can’t _breathe,_ he’s panicking and there’s something rising in his throat and pressing down even harder on his chest, he fucked up, he fucked up, _he fucked up._

George and Sapnap and ~~Mom~~ Puffy and _everyone,_ they’d all left, left him to rot in an obsidian box by himself.

And everyone that he had lost, his grip on them slipping even as he tried to explain. Tried his best to, _he doesn’t know what he’ll do if even they leave, if even_ they, _too, turn their backs on him —_

And they did, and he broke.

Faded green eyes stare at both everything and nothing. His breathing is ragged and his mind paints the stark black walls with splashes of scarlet and vermillion and cerise, red, red, _red._

He tilts his head back, staring at the dark dark ceiling, the walls that trapped him in in a suffocatingly small box with his only light source being the burning lava that flowed outside and two scattered blocks of glowstone that barely shine in the dark.

_You are a monster._

He — he's tired. He's tired and sick of it and he wants it to be over, but knows that he deserves it. deserves to sit here in a pit of hell as people come by to wave and jeer, deserves to be confined in this small space, the bare minimum.

Food and water and shelter, but they shackle scarred frail wrists with iron to the ground. Chaining a broken man who had learned no better as a boy, living through wars and fighting for his very life, his very meaning for all those years.

He’s done it for so long.

He’s so _tired._

 _Bite your tongue,_ he chides himself.

He deserves it, he deserves it, _he deserves it._

He needs it.

He sighs and leans back into the corner, sharp obsidian digging into his back; uncomfortable, but it was nothing that mattered. Nothing mattered, now.

Dream digs the palms of his hands into the uneven stone, enjoying briefly _~~broken broken broken~~ _the brief flash of pain that it brought him.

_Pandora’s Vault, huh?_

It is accurately named enough; this was a prison to hold a villain, an evil. A chamber for him to suffer, to have pain inflicted onto him because _that was what he deserved._ A place to shackle a monster, to prevent him from ever being unleashed again.

And a monster he was.

_A puppeteer._

They're all so right that it hurts, searing angry red marks into pale skin splattered with freckles. His hands raise to clutch at his head, fingers clenching onto locks of faded and thin greasy blonde hair.

It brands him, inside and out, _and has_ branded him, marking him as the evil. Marking him as in the wrong here, and he is, _but he is,_ and he can’t _think_ because words are crawling inside of his mind and whispering that he is wrong, he’s always wrong.

He’s shivering, body shaking uncomfortably.

He should listen to Wilbur. Wilbur… Wilbur was right. Wilbur’s always right, and he’s always wrong; that was how the world works. Turning round and round and round, from day to night and back again, but these always stay true, staying the same nevertheless.

_A villain._

He's done everything wrong, _everything,_ he can't do anything right and it _hurts so much_. He's not right, he's not right, he's not right.

He’s never right, he’d never been right, because he fucks up left and right and leaves a trail of shards of glass and broken nations behind him.

The words repeat in his head, an endless loop of hatred and tearing him down but he deserves it, they're right, they're always right and he's always wrong.

Wasn't that how the world always was?

_A monster._

Everything he does makes himself sick. _Everything._ The war, the explosions, the frantic way he’d tried to fight a war much too big for him at fifteen years old. He had stood, stance shaky but expression defiant all the same, declaring to Wilbur, _“We are at_ war! _We have no mercy —_ no mercy — _for you!”_

He’d existed in war, conditioned to live for survival. He’d grown up trying to always seem better than he was, grown up trying to keep on a confident facade. For if he let his mask slip for even a moment, everyone else would surely pounce at that. Anything to make him weaker than he already is, to degrade him.

He — he couldn’t let that happen, no matter what.

He had to hide. He always needed to hide; and that was the truth. Had to pretend to be invincible, or otherwise be struck down.

He had to be the leader here, the _adult_ here. Strong and unshakeable and someone to listen to, and be the face of the SMP.

He ignored how he was fighting against Tommy, someone who he had once considered a friend. He ignored the voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like George, protesting that he was nothing but a child as well. He watched in a desolate anger as Wilbur, a man meant to be the _responsible one_ here, the only adult in a land where a teenager kept guard, pulled erratic motions and lied with honey-smooth words.

He watched as he pulled the child soldier card, again and again and again, as if Tommy and Tubbo were the only children here. As if his side were not merely a team of battle-worn and tired teenagers, spending all-nighters day after day, heads planted in their arms and grasping at every advantage they could get against L’Manberg.

 _Fine,_ he thought, struggling to hold up the weight of the world as he knelt, and still kneels underneath it with thin shaky arms, grimly staring at Wilbur. _Be that way._

Until his resolve crumbled; and he was sure L’Manburg had, too, all except for Wilbur. Wilbur, who would stand for it no matter what, and dragging Tommy and Tubbo along with him despite everything.

He paced around the dark walls that they had mercilessly slaughtered them in, stared at the bloodied arrow that had taken away Tommy’s second life. Stared at everything with empty eyes, and _wonders._

Wondered what all of this was for.

And when everything had finally been _over,_ finally, he let himself _breathe_ for the first time in months. Let himself relax, for just a moment before he slipped on his mask once again.

He ignores the way Tommy had taken up Wilbur’s ideals, fighting for something that he had never seen him care for before Wilbur had come with silver words and tainting the world with smoky grey. He ignored everything, ignored the sly grins masked by genuine looks that Wilbur had carried everywhere he had gone now taken up by Quackity, ignored how everyone was pulling on the strings of the world, trying to make everything go their way.

He ignores everything, simply calls of _villain, you’re corrupt and a monster and you_ bitch, _you fucked up_ echoing in his mind as he screams and _begs_ for anyone to save him as he loses his grip and falls screaming into an empty black void. He’s sinking under crashing slate grey waves in his mind, feeling so utterly blind and tired and _done,_ but trying his best to breathe.

_(He doesn’t want to breathe, not anymore.)_

His hands shake as he curls further into himself, pulled back into stark reality in the prison cell as he breathes in ashes and forces them out in hacking coughs. His fingers scrabble aimlessly at the cuff of his tattered clothes, picking at his skin.

He raises a hand to rub at his eyes, mind muddled and sluggish and simply _unwillingness_ written in every movement. He hasn't been sleeping for days and barely managed to get any food in without retching it up, because he knows that he hates this but knows that he _deserves it,_ and everything in his head speaks against each other, clashing. Like wild waves pounding against each other, their cacophony harsh and rising into a scream.

He’s so confused, so tired, and so so broken.

_You are a puppeteer._

_You are a villain._

_You are a monster._

_You are broken, and there is no going back._


End file.
